Noam Chomsky - the deranged Marxoid from MIT - is enjoying a kind ofrevival with recent interviews in the New York Times and a book reviewof his latest screed that while dismissing its lunatic conclusionspays it respect as an argument that should be taken seriously. (?!!!)The Bush-hating Times no doubt finds rationality in Chomsky's deviltheory of history which casts America as the Great Satan and allpurpose explanation of what's wrong in the world.

It seems an appropriate time, therefore, to take a look at one of hisearlier books -- and one of the few that comes close to actually beinga book - and not just an interview collection of "Chomsky Says." This1985text Turning the Tide covers a variety of topics including the armsrace, nuclear freeze movement and domestic policy. But most of itsfocus is on US policy toward Latin America - especially RonaldReagan's successful efforts to halt communist subversion and expansionin Central America -- which he refers to as an American "terror war."Actually Chomsky has the annoying habit of referring to almosteverything the US does internationally as a "terror war" or"terrorism" or "state terrorism," greatly diminishing the impact orvalidity any of his points may have.

Turning the Tide is divided into five chapters. The first threeconcentrating on Central America tend to overlap and repeatthemselves-in fact much of his work is highly repetitive. They includesuch choice section headings as: "The planning of [US] state terror,"Planning for hegemony," "The system applied: Torturing El Salvador,""Torturing Nicaragua," "Torturing Hispaniola," and most creatively,"Torturing Guatemala." Chomsky, it seems is fascinated by the alleged"torturing" of entire countries.

In the fourth chapter he focuses on national security policy anddescribes "The race to destruction," and the "drift toward global war"which according to Chomsky is a "result of US government programs thathave little to do with security, but are deeply rooted in thestructure of power in our society..." One section is titled:"Containing the anti-Fascist resistance: From death camps to deathsquads" and describes his standard US-Nazi analogy. To Chomsky anyonethe US opposes (or is opposed to the US) is anti-Fascist ipso-factobecause the US and its allies in his view are Fascist.

His final chapter turns from foreign policy to the domestic US sceneand "the dedicated efforts that have been taken by dominant elites toovercome the democratic revival of the 1960's " Chomsky believes hisfellow counterculture pseudo-Marxist radicals were the vanguard ofthis "democratic revival."

While Chomsky dishes a great deal of dirt on all prior US presidents,Reagan - who Chomsky considers a simpleton likening his pronouncementsto the "random babbling of a young child"-- was nevertheless far moreevil in intent and results than all his predecessors and deservesspecial opprobrium.

With regard to Reagan and Central America, Chomsky's main thesis isthat Reagan was simply continuing a long-term policy on behalf of evilAmerican economic elites to suppress the region's indigenous peopleand control its "vast" natural resources- apparently often in thestrategically significant form of bananas. In Chomsky's world the moreinsignificant the country, the more important it is to the evil eliteswho dominate US foreign policy - "the weaker and poorer a country is,the more dangerous it is as an example." This theory of the "dangerousexample" animates much of his views on US policy toward thehemisphere.

In Chomsky's mind, despite the strategic oil resources of the MiddleEast, mineral wealth of Africa, and other valuable resources of theFar East, the US has spent "billions of dollars" and immense effort torape, murder and pillage the people of Latin American countries suchas Nicaragua and El Salvador, that by his own admission coulddisappear and American business would never notice.

Why American elites would spend decades and billions of dollars insavage wars of repression to destroy countries when they could moreeasily and cheaply gain their resources through trade is never reallyaddressed. But according to Chomsky these insignificant countrieswere close to home and were in the process of creating successfulalternative models of economic development that didn't require USbusiness and investment.

Chomsky of course disregards the fact that all socialist experimentshave been proven total disasters and have brought only food rationing,repression, death and famine to the guinea pig populations whosufferedunder them. In his view the potential success alone of these"dangerous examples" was a mortal threat to elite American interestsrequiring an unrelenting and savage US response.

One of the first things one is struck by when reading Chomsky is thepropagandistic nature of his effort and his shrill, pedantic and oftentimes snide tone. His work is also extraordinarily dense and generallya chore to read. He packs detailed anecdotes, facts and figures amonghis diatribes in an almost overwhelming manner. The sympatheticreader's conclusion: there is simply so much evidence; Chomsky must bea genius and his conclusions irrefutable. Chomsky's intent may also beto inundate his critics in order to produce sheer physical and mentalexhaustion if not ultimately ideological surrender.

In Turning the Tide Chomsky focuses most of his one-sided ire at USactions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, but also delves on Guatemala andHispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), detailing an allegedpattern of savage US intervention and rabid, systematic looting anddomination. In chapter 2 he describes his important Fifth Freedomtheory which provides the intellectual framework for much of hisforeign policy analysis.

To the Four Freedoms articulated by Franklin Roosevelt (freedom ofexpression and religion and freedom from want and fear) Chomsky addswhat he considers the American elite's secret yet overriding FifthFreedom - "the freedom to rob and exploit."

To him the "preservation of the Fifth Freedom, by whatever means arefeasible" is a "guiding geopolitical conception" in US planning. Butthis idea is even more than a planning premise. To Chomsky this evilsecret principle is "an invariant core, deeply rooted in the basicinstitutions of American society." It virtually defines US foreignpolicy. Hence all US actions in Latin America are seen through theprism of his Fifth Freedom thesis.

He also picks and chooses quotes and references to show a uniformthought process in a homogenous, unified American business-governmentelite. To Chomsky there are no competing interests or internalpolitical debates in the United States; only one state-businessconglomerate with a fixed, eternal goal of domination.

And while this Fifth Freedom supposedly is a secret principle, Chomskyselectively accesses some previously classified US governmentdocuments to buttress his argument that all US policy is based on thisprinciple. Most significant in his writings is his extensive GeorgeKennan misquote from State Department Policy Planning Study 23.

In the real world (rather than Chomsky's delusion one) the passageChomsky quotes from explains Kennan's realpolitik approach topreserving US national security interests and containing of Sovietcommunism in the Far East. But this widely used quote is taken out ofcontext and misinterpreted. Byomitting key elements, Chomsky grossly distorts Kennan's intent andglobalizes his conclusions.

Chomsky quotes Kennan as follows:

" we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of itspopulation...In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envyand resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise apattern ofrelationships which will permit us to maintain this position ofdisparity without positive detriment to or national security. To doso, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on ourimmediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that wecan afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction Weshould cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unrealobjectives such as human rights, the raising of standards of living,and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to haveto deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered byidealistic slogans the better."

Despite the fact that Kennan argues against being "hampered byidealistic slogans" in this secret document, Chomsky immediately notesthat "the idealistic slogans' must constantly be trumpeted by USelites in public in order to pacify the domestic population " But thatis Chomsky speaking not Kennan. By describing Kennan's ideas this way,Chomsky makes it appear that Kennan is arguing that human rights arejust US slogans and should be ignored in order to maintain US wealth.

Unfortunately when reading Chomsky the truth is almost invariably lostin what Chomsky dishonestly leaves out of his quotes. In this case itis an entire paragraph detailing Kennan's pessimistic but realisticview that US wealth would provoke envy and resentment no matter whatwe did and that because of problems of population growth and foodsupply (especially in India and China) that many countries in Asiawould fall into the Soviet sphere regardless of US policy or focus onhuman rights. To Kennan globalwealth disparity was a sad fact of life not a goal to achieve.

Kennan's stated emphasis in the paragraph leading to the above quoteis: "It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations asa moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples." As such heurges restraint in our policies toward Asia and counsels the US toleave most of mainland Asia alone and focus on keeping Japan and thePhilippines firmly in the US sphere as bulwarks of US security inAsia. A foreign policy realist Kennan argued regularly against thetrumpeting of idealistic slogans in favor of pursuing realisticpolitics. These are far from the views presented by Chomsky.

Immediately following the Kennan quote Chomsky uses a quote from the1984 bipartisan Kissinger Commission report that states "theinternational purposes of the United States in the late 20th centuryare cooperation, not hegemony or domination; partnership, notconfrontation; a decent life for all, not exploitation." But sincethis was in a public document, the quote is spun by Chomsky as anexample of the public trumpeting of insincere "idealistic slogans."

For Chomsky there is a quote to fit his every argument, even if he hasto twist or parse the quote to make it fit or simply define it as hewishes. He accepts at face value those statements that he agrees withor that support his point directly, and when they do not, he simplydiscounts or interprets them as examples of disinformation.

If one is able to get beyond all this the next hurdle one faces isthat despite his intellectual pretensions Chomsky is not a reliablesource of historical information or a serious political scientist. Onthe contrary, areader would be well served to fact check every citation and findproper context whenever reading Chomsky. A linguist by training, he isextremely adept at pointing out sometimes valid omissions andinaccuracies in the works of his opponents, but considering his ownhighly selective use of citations as noted above, one-sided analysis,conclusion by inference and association as well as outright distortionand omission of fact---it is surprising so many on the left andelsewhere consider him a serious academic.

Chomsky's sloppy use of citations and documentation is a serious flawin his work and hampers the readers' ability to confirm or evaluatethe context or validity of his research. In one example on page 4 of"Turning the Tide," Chomsky states that "the United Fruit Companyclient took power [in Honduras] in 1932 and hand-in hand with UnitedFruit ruled his country for the next seventeen years.'" Who actuallysaid this? We don't know. His source is the 1985 book "The end andthe beginning: the NicaraguanRevolution" written by John Booth. But no where does Chomsky say whothe quote came from or why it is authoritative rather than simplyconjecture or opinion.

Sometimes Chomsky's quotes contradict his main points; as when he isarguing that the malevolence of the US embargo against the Sandinistasis "fully in accord with our operative values, throughout ourhistory." But his source, James Austin of the Harvard Business School,admits in the same quote that the worse effects of this embargo are onthe "US-made potable water system and Nicaraguan hospitals which relyon US equipment." (Italics added).

Apparently Chomsky misses the irony of including admissions of US-madepotable water systems and the supply of US medical equipment toaugment claims of our historically "inhumane" and "morallyreprehensible" actions against the poor people of Nicaragua. How doesChomsky reconcile his view ofour perennial aggression against Nicaragua with the fact thatNicaragua's medical system and water supply was almost all made in theUSA? He doesn't seem even to notice the contradiction.

One of Chomsky's key techniques is to make the US operate in a globalvacuum so it appears omnipotent and omni-malevolent. Hence for Chomskythe world revolves simply and entirely around the United States whichis guilty of most of the world's ills. Other countries, includingthose of Western Europe and especially the Soviet Union are but abackdrop or bit players in a historical drama totally dominated by theAmerican colossus.

This may be due to the fact that as one reviewer notes "Chomsky is acritic, not a policy-maker, a whistle-blower rather than a strategistfurnished with alternatives." But this is an understatement. Part ofChomsky's worldview is based on the idea that self-criticism is thehighest form of moral value. Of course this self-criticism applies tocriticizing ONLY the United States ad nauseum as the "proxy self" butnot to Chomsky ever criticizing himself or the left when it is wrong.His continuing apologetics for Cambodia'sgenocidal communist leader Pol Pot is a case in point.

Most of the other countries Chomsky discusses, such as Vietnam,Nicaragua, Cuba, etc. are never anything more than innocent victims ofAmerican "savagery." Their actions are wholly reactive to USinitiatives. They never have any autonomous foreign policies. His is anegative-ethnocentrism on a grand scale. There is never mention of theplans or stratagems of countries other than the US or those controlledby the US such as Israel or our "neo-Nazi" South American allies.Often he refers to the Soviet bloc as "so-called" communist states.

When he does mention a geopolitically significant country such as theSoviet Union it generally is to systematically apologize andrationalize its perceived negative behavior and show the hypocrisy ofUS policy toward the "alleged" enemy. Rarely does Chomsky acknowledge,much less describe in detail, any evil conducted by the Soviet Union,Castro or the Sandinistas such as the millions tortured and murderedin the Soviet Gulag or Stalin's purges, Castro's soccer field showtrials and mass executions or Sandinistaatrocities.

Though he occasionally makes a denunciation of the Soviets it isusually done simply pro-forma and as a way to create a moralequivalence between the US and USSR. As when he states about theSoviet Union on page 218: "Reagan's Evil Empire is exactly that, as isits American counterpart." More often the Soviet Union is described aswell-intentioned and acting defensively, whereas the US is alwayscynical and malevolent.

In chapter four Chomsky does a few references to Soviet flaws but alsoquotes Soviet leaders or the state press with a total lack of criticalanalysis. This approach contrasts sharply with the critical if nothostileand disbelieving approach he takes with almost all US government,media or business sources and statements.

On page 179 he quotes Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko as saying"we are prepared to go even further-to agree on banning in general theuse of force both in space, and from space against earth." Whiletaking Gromyko's obvious propaganda statement at face value he thenrefers to the Reaganadministration as being "strongly opposed to this hopefuldevelopment."

He then quotes without questioning Radio Moscow (the Kremlin'sofficial state controlled media) as saying that the Soviet idea is "toconclude an agreement to prevent militarization of outer space " Ofcourse to Chomsky unlike his view of US statements, Soviet statementsare never considered simply as the trumpeting of idealistic slogans."Shortly thereafter Chomsky refers to an "evasive" Times report on thesame topic-evasive because it did not see the Soviet proposal and USreaction in the same pro-Soviet light as Chomsky. When US pressreports what Chomsky believes is correct he describes it as"accurate," but when it does not, he calls it an example of the USpropaganda press and refers to it as "evasive," "self-censoring" ormisleading."

In his arrogant and delusional perspective only Chomsky sees the truthwhich is obscured by American "corporate propaganda" and"self-censorship." The majority of Americans are simply pawns anddupes.

In chapter five he argues that there has been an orchestrated massivecampaign to squelch the "democratic revival" of the 1960s. The factthat the supposedly repressed counter-culture leftists he speaks ofgradually came to dominate academia, the media and much of mainstreamAmerican popular culture since the 1960s appears irrelevant to him. Infact he denies this reality as vehemently as he denies the atrocitiesof Cambodia's "killing fields."

Instead he uses his "propaganda model" to show that Americans aresystematically kept from hearing the truth through acorporate-controlled propaganda conspiracy, despite the fact that thathis own popularity among the intellectual "avant-garde" seems todisprove his thesis.

So Chomsky argues that from the 1960s onward the "business classesmoved effectively to extend their already massive (italics added)dominance over universities and the media " Adding that "well-fundedreactionary jingoist ("conservative") journals are now widespread inan effort to counter threats to intellectual independence " But, ifthere is such massive "business" dominance over the universities andmedia, why is there a need for such a campaign to counter "threats ofintellectual independence?" Conveniently according to Chomsky, it isbecause that dominance is "always deemed inadequate" by the genericand all-encompassing US elite he simply calls "business." As with theUS itself, nothing is ever enough for these business elites - theirvoracious appetite for total control is insatiable.

Meanwhile he claims that the paranoid vision of "Marxist-controlled"universities is "comical" but not limited to the "totalitarian right,"noting a New York Times Book Review article written by a personChomsky describes a "respected liberal intellectual historian"(identified in the footnotes as John Patrick Diggins) that also arguesthat Marxism "has come close to being the dominant ideology in theacademic world." Yet rather than analyze or and refute the argumentsmade by this "respected liberal intellectual," Chomsky simplydismisses them as "so remote from reality as to defy rationaldiscussion." Many points that contradict Chomsky's views are discardedthat way.

Chomsky adds that Diggins's view "can only be understood as areflection of the fear that if heresy is granted even a tiny opening,all is lost." Why this respected liberal intellectual would sufferfrom such a paranoid fear, is left unexplained. This condescendingdismissal without discussion of the counterarguments of opposing viewsis another major flaw in Chomsky's pseudo-scholarly approach.

Chomsky's faults also include his obsessive need to revel inad-hominem attacks, overstatement and misstatement. He refers to eventhe most innocuous foes as a "fanatics," the slightest inaccuracy inopponent's argument as "frauds" and "lies." But his obsession withexaggeration and hyperbole is most troubling.

Beginning in the first pages of "Turning the tide" Chomsky uses anoverwhelming and repetitively mind-numbing number of graphic anecdotesdescribing alleged massacres, tortures and murders by Nicaraguananti-communist rebels ("contras') or by Central American governmentsallied with the US. These often unsubstantiated vignettes are alwaysbrutal and disturbing. He provides lurid details about decapitations,bloody rapes and the sadistic butchering of children.

On page 11 he quotes from a report that a witness had returned to abattlefield and found what the Contras had allegedly done to onevictim including "cut his throat, then cut open his stomach and lefthis intestineshanging out on the ground like a string." They also reportedly openedup another victim "and took out his intestines and cut off histesticles."

Beyond the gruesome descriptions though, when we look at his source,we find it was a "fact-finding mission" conducted by a US law firmrepresenting Nicaraguan interests." Chomsky uses that euphemism toavoid saying the firm represented the Sandinista government. The"report" could thus be seen aspart of the firm's public relations effort on behalf of theSandinistas and probably should not be considered impartial orcredible.

Later Chomsky notes that a mother describes how her husband, a laypastor, and her five children were kidnapped and when she found themthe next day "they were all cut up. Their ears were pulled off, theirthroats were cut, their noses and other parts cut off." Since Chomskyis writing about Contra atrocities one assumes this is simply anotherexample, but this is never stated directly. And worse yet, there is nodirect citation for this quote. As is the case for many of Chomsky'squotes and references, there are specific citations above and belowthis quote but nothing to determine where this specific quote camefrom. It is virtually impossible to correctly identify many ofChomsky's references.

The citations he does use correctly are often from mainstream leftistnewspapers such as the UK's Guardian, or obscure local sources such asa Peruvian church-based publication or other leftist "human rightsgroups." Never does he acknowledge that these may be questionable, orbiased sources. Yet, according to Tim Brown a fellow of StanfordUniversity's Hoover Institution, many of these so-called atrocitieswere deliberate fabrications and deserved a much more skepticalreading. He states:

"I was personally witness to literally hundreds of instances in whichinternational human rights activists condemned alleged human rightsviolations by anti-Communist guerrillas that were later proven to havebeen fabrications. Recently, the former military commander of the FMLNof El Salvador has explained very carefully and on the record to mejust how this was done and how easy it was for them to manipulate theAmerican human rights establishment because their fabrications werealways accepted withoutquestion by their American sympathizers."

Brown adds:

"His comments are corroborated by the written contemporary record.According to existing archives, a very high percentage, perhaps 40%,of all official FMLN members were assigned by the party to humanrights missions, including the planting of fabricated stories, becausethe FMLN understood that they might never win militarily but could doso on the political front. This made their propaganda war even moreimportant than their military effort. That they were so successful indoing so was a direct function of the willingnessof their sympathizers to accept their fabrications or exaggerationswithout checking the sources."

Chomsky can certainly fall into this category.

And apparently these alleged crimes by US proxies are always brutaland gratuitously sadistic. None of America's victims are simply shotor executed. They are all systematically tortured and destroyed inways Nazis would be proud. And this is not surprising since accordingto Chomsky many of America's "allies" in Latin America and elsewhereare in fact Nazis or neo-Nazis as when he refers to our "variousclients, particularly Argentine neo-Nazis" (when Argentina was undermilitary rule).

Thus equating the US and Nazi Germany in Chapter four Chomsky actuallydetails his view that the US conspired with German Nazis to create anew post-war global fascist alliance. On page 200 he states "Thepostwar US project of crushing the anti-fascist resistance [allcommunists automatically fall into this category] with Nazi assistanceestablishes a direct link between Nazi Germany and the killing fieldsin Central America." In developing this conspiracy Chomsky generallyignores the decisive American role in defeating Nazi Germany as whenhe notes "US solicitude and care for useful Nazi gangsters as Europewas liberated from Hitler." As if Europe was "liberated" by itself.

And of course according to Chomsky, these Central American killingfields are always attributed somehow - though never quite sure how -to the US. When he can't make some sort of direct connection betweenthe actual perpetrators and the US or US forces he simply defaults toreferring to "US proxies." Thus he constantly refers to "US-backed""US-supplied" or "US- trained" forces. Sometimes even the simple useof "US-made" equipment (such as a radio) by any of these "proxies" isenough to infer American complicityin war crimes.

On page 6 Chomsky cites Charles Clements, a "committed pacifist" andformer US Air Force pilot who had been sent to a psychiatric hospitalafter refusing to fly missions in Vietnam, as a witness to many ofthese types of US proxy atrocities in El Salvador in 1982-83. Chomskyspeaks for Clements throughout. He begins by noting "the strafing byUS-supplied [Italics added] jets aimed specifically againstdefenseless peasants."

This is followed by stating that the "worst atrocities were carriedout by US-trained elite battalions and by air and artillery unitsemploying tactics designed by US forces in Vietnam and taught by USadvisors." According to Chomsky, simply being US-trained or usingbasic military tactics employed and taught by the US, any allegedatrocities conducted by Salvadorian forces were directly attributableto the US.

He adds further that that Clements, "using a US-made scanner couldhear the voices of American advisers directing troops on their massmurder mission." Since none of this a quote, Chomsky cleverly anddisingenuously confuses what Clements actually said with Chomsky's owninterpretation and commentaryand totally obscures the distinction between what may have been normalcombat and alleged war crimes.

As the above noted example demonstrates, he rarely substantiates howthe forces in question were US-backed or trained. An expertpropagandist, Chomsky will often mingle truth with half-truth withgeneralization and inference. As with the above-noted example he willalso make references to actions of specific US-trained battalions inEl Salvador after describing numerous alleged brutalities by otherun-named "US-backed" forces. The reader is expected to assume they'reall the same.

Chomsky's work is littered with left wing sources such as the Nation,the Guardian or openly Marxist human rights groups. When "mainstream"or reputable media, academic or other sources contradict hisworldview, he simply reverts to his argument that we can't believethese sources.

When referring to Nicaragua, he revels in alleged "contra' crimes aswell as the Crimes of the prior dictator Anastasio Somoza, but ignoresthe thousands of Nicaraguans who were imprisoned, tortured, orexecuted by their new communist masters as they attempted to protecttheir private property, or who simply committed the crime of owningprivate property. In "Remembering Sandinista Genocide," Jamie Glazovwrites:

According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistascarried out over 8,000 political executions within three years of therevolution. The number of "anti-revolutionary" Nicaraguans who had"disappeared" in Sandinista hands or had died "trying to escape" werenumbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political prisonersin the Sandinista's' ruthless tyranny was estimated at 20,000. Torturewas institutionalized.

Chomsky also fails to note that unlike the Somoza regime, theSandinistas did not leave the native populations on the Atlantic coastof Nicaragua in peace. All Nicaraguans were forced to take part intheir Marxist experiment.

Glazov adds:

"Thus, in perfect Khmer Rouge style, the Sandinistas inflicted aruthless forcible relocation of tens of thousands of Indians fromtheir land. Like Stalin, they used state-created famine as a weaponagainst these "enemies of the people."

The Organization of American States and the Nicaraguan Human Rightsorganization have found that a large number of clandestine cemeteriesfrom the Contra War period have been excavated in Nicaragua andseveral hundred bodies exhumed and examined by forensic pathologists.In every case the bodies were confirmed to be the remains of victimsof Sandinista Army atrocities.

These include documented examples of clandestine cemeteries at Jalapa,Corinto Finca, Cerro de Mocoron, Santa Matilde, Cano del Aislado,Murra, and Loma Chata. There are many others. Yet Chomsky convenientlyignore this evidence condemning the Sandinistas.

After communism's global collapse there have been scores sourcespainting a clearer picture of the scale of leftist deception anddelusion regarding the real effects of decades of socialistexperimentation. Unfortunately, Chomsky continues to ignore theevidence.

The fact is that in this political work (as opposed perhaps to hisactual specialty in linguistics) Chomsky is not an academic or afair-minded intellectual. He does not research evidence and then finda model that bestdescribes it. Instead, he is a propagandist who has created hisfanciful models such as the Fifth Freedom and propaganda model, andsimply looks for evidence to support it, ignoring, discarding ordismissing all other contrary evidence. The evidence he does use ishighly selective, often taken out of context, uncritical whenreferring to America's enemies and disingenuous and misleading whenapplied to the US. Too often it is impossible to confirm what sourceshe was using.

In typical propagandist style, he seamlessly co-mingles many elementsof fact and truth with speculation, conjecture, misquotes,interpretation and commentary, never identifying where one ends andthe other begins. Focusing almost exclusively on monolithic US actionsand flaws he creates a virtual parallel universe that ignores the truemotivations and intentions of adversaries, simplifies and demonizes USmotives and intentions and provides a thoroughly one-sided anddistorted reality. Sadly, many on the left live in this Chomskyfantasy world.

Paul Crespo is a political analyst, columnist and former member of TheMiami Herald editorial board. An adjunct faculty member in thepolitical science department at the University of Miami, he is also aSenior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies inWashington, DC. He served as a US Marine Corps officer on threecontinents. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of ForeignService, he has advanced degrees from London and CambridgeUniversities in the UK.

--Jez"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Societyhighly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselvesand to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killedperhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."R.D. Laing

--Jez"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Societyhighly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselvesand to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killedperhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."R.D. Laing

Post by BAKUNINYou spineless scum can't stand that Noam Chomsky is exposing the US militaryindustrial complex for the murdering heartless machine it is.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964589702/103-3220142-1708668?v=glanceCohn's book shines necessary light on Chomsky's dealings and outrightmiscreance. He has a real and continuing affinity for purveyors ofneo-Nazi hatred. As Cohn reports here, Chomsky's Fateful Triangle wasfirst issued in 1983 by Noontide Press, the publishing and booksellingarm of the California neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying Institute forHistorical Review.

Noontide's catalogue of anti-Semitic offerings, Cohn reports, includesHolocaust deniers, Nazi-era propaganda films banned for sale inGermany, hate literature by Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the lateFather Coughlin, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion andother books by Chomsky, whom Noontide crows, "enlightens as no otherwriter on Israel, Zionism, and American complicity." According toCohn, Chomksy refuses to disassociate himself from this group.

What's worse, Chomsky defends anti-Semites and Holocaust revisionists.Cohn discovered two "remarkably revealing" documents exposingChomsky's link with La Veille Taupe (The Old Mole), the Frenchpublisher of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. In one, VT chiefPierre Guillaume recounts his 1979 introduction to Chomsky. Withinmonths, without further contact between them, Chomsky signed andpromoted Guillaume's petition in support of Faurisson's "findings,"describing Faurisson as a "respected" professor conducting "extensivehistorical research into the Holocaust question."

--Jez"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Societyhighly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselvesand to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killedperhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."R.D. Laing

--Jez"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Societyhighly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselvesand to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killedperhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."R.D. Laing